Four Years in Rebel Capitals Part 4

There were offices, card-rooms, bar-rooms aboard all these boats; and as the down-trip occupies from forty-eight to one hundred hours--according to the stage of the river and the luck in running aground, a performance to be expected once in each trip--we become quite a mutual amus.e.m.e.nt community by the time it is over.

This trip the boat was very crowded, and at supper the effect of the line of small tables, filled with officers in uniform, ladies tastefully dressed and a sprinkling of homespun coats--all reflected in the long mirror--was very bright and gay. After meals, there is generally a promenade on the upper deck, where people talk, smoke, inspect each other and flirt. They then adjourn to state-room, saloon or card-room, to lounge or read to kill time; for the Alabama is anything but a picturesque stream, with its low, marshy banks only varied by occasional "cotton slides" and "negro quarters."

This night was splendidly clear, the moon bright as day, and Staple and I with our cigars staid on deck to sc.r.a.pe acquaintance with the pilot and the small, seedy Frenchman who officiated at the calliope. He was an original in his way--"the Professor"--his head like a bullet, garnished with hair of the most wiry blackness, cut close as the scissors could hold it, looking like the most uncompromising porcupine.

Of course, he was a political refugee.

"_Dixie! Aire nationale! pas bonne chose!_" he exclaimed, seating himself at his instrument and twirling a huge moustache. "_Voila le Ma.r.s.eillaise!_ Zat make hymn national for you!" And he made the whistle roar and shriek in a way to have sent the red caps into the air a hundred miles away.

"Grand! Splendid!" roared Styles above the steam. "Why, Professor, you're a genius. Come and take some brandy."

The professor banged the lid of his instrument, led the way instanter down to our state-room; and, once there, did take something; then something else and, finally, something more, till he got very thick-tongued and enthusiastic.

"Grand aire of ze Liberte!" he cried at last, mounting again to his perch by the smoke-stack. "Song compose by me for one grand man--ze Van Dorn. I make zees--me, myself--and dedicate to heem!" And he banged at the keys till he tortured the steam into the Liberty duet, from "_Puritani_."

"How you fine zat, eh? Zat makes ze hymn for ze Souse. Me, I am republicain! _Voila!_ I wear ze moustache of _ze revolutionaire_--my hairs cut themselves _en mecontent_! Were zere colere more red as red, I should be zat!"

The professor was so struck by the brilliancy of this idea, that he played the air again, until it rang like a phantom chorus over the still plantations. At last, overcome by emotion and brandy, he slid from the stool and sat at the foot of the smoke-stack, muttering:

"Zat is ze hymn--_hic_--dedicate to ze general and to ze--_hic_--countree!"

Then he slept the sleep of the just conscience.

"Thar's the 'Senator,' and she's gainin' on us," said the pilot, as we walked forward, pointing to a thin column of smoke rising over the trees just abreast of us.

"How far astern?"

"A matter of two mile round that pint."

"Splendid night for a race," muttered Styles. "Will she overtake us, Cap'n?"

"Wail, maibee!" replied the old river dog, while the most professional grin shot over his hard-wooden features. "Specially ef I ease up this 'ar ole gal."

"Ha! Now we'll have it. We won't turn in just now," chuckled Styles, banging me in the back.

Almost imperceptibly our speed slackens, the thin dark column creeps nearer round the trees on the point in our wake; at last the steamer bursts into sight, not a pistol shot astern.

There is a sharp click of our pilot's bell, a gasping throb, as if our boat took a deep, long breath; and just as the "Senator" makes our wheel we dash ahead again, with every stroke of the piston threatening to rack our frail fabric into shreds.

The river here is pretty wide and the channel deep and clear. The "Senator" follows in gallant style, now gaining our quarter, now a boat's length astern--both engines roaring and snorting like angry hippopotami; both vessels rocking and straining till they seem to paw their way through the churned water.

Talk of horse-racing and _rouge-et-noir_! But there is no excitement that can approach boat-racing on a southern river! One by one people pop up the ladders and throng the rails. First come the unemployed deck-hands, then a stray gentleman or two, and finally ladies and children, till the rail is full and every eye is anxiously strained to the opposite boat.

She holds her own wondrous well, considering the reputation of ours. At each burst, when she seems to gain on us, the crowd hold their breath; as she drops off again there is a deep-drawn, gasping sign of relief, like wind in the pines. Even the colonel has roused himself from dreams of turtle at the St. Charles, and red fish at Pensacola; coming on deck in a shooting jacket and glengary cap, that make him look like a jaunty _Fosco_. He leans over the stern rail, smoking his cabana in long, easy whiffs as we gain a length; sending out short, angry puffs at the "Senator" as she creeps up on us.

Foot by foot, we gain steadily until the gap is widened to three or four boat-lengths, though the "Senator" piles her fires till the sh.o.r.es behind her glow from their reflection; and her decks--now black with anxious lookers-on--send up cheer after cheer, as she snorts defiantly after us.

Suddenly the bank seems to spring up right under our port bow! We have cut it too close! Two sharp, vicious clicks of the bell; our helm goes hard down and the engines stop with a sullen jar, as I catch a hissing curse through the set teeth of the pilot.

A yell of wild triumph rises from the rival's deck. On she comes in gallant style, shutting the gap and pa.s.sing us like a race-horse, before we can swing into the channel and recover headway. It is a splendid sight as the n.o.ble boat pa.s.ses us; her black bulk standing out in the clear moonlight against the dim, gray banks like a living monster; her great chimneys snorting out volumes of ma.s.sive black smoke that trail out level behind her, from the great speed. Her side toward us is crowded with men, women and children; hats, handkerchiefs and hands are swung madly about to aid the effort of the hundred voices.

Close down to the water's edge--scarce above the line of foam she cuts--her lower deck lies black and undefined in the shadow of the great ma.s.s above it. Suddenly it lights up with a lurid flash, as the furnace-doors swing wide open; and in the hot glare the negro stokers--their stalwart forms jetty black, naked to the waist and streaming with exertion that makes the muscles strain out in great cords--show like the distorted imps of some pictured inferno. They, too, have imbibed the excitement. With every gesture of anxious haste and eyeb.a.l.l.s starting from their dusky heads, some plunge the long rakes into the red mouths of the furnace, twisting and turning the crackling ma.s.s with terrific strength; others hurl in huge logs of resinous pine, already heated by contact till they burn like pitch.

Then the great doors bang to; the _Yo Ho!_ of the negroes dies away and the whole hull is blacker from the contrast; while the "Senator,"

puffing denser clouds than ever, swings round the point a hundred yards ahead!

There is dead silence on our boat--silence so deep that the rough whisper of the pilot to the knot around him is heard the whole length of her deck: "d.a.m.nation! but I'll overstep her yit, or--bust!"

"Good, old man!" responds Styles--"Let her out and I'll stand the wine!"

Then the old colonel walks to the wheel; his face purple, his glengary pushed back on his head, his cigar glowing like the "red eye of battle," as he puffs angry wheezes of smoke through his nostrils.

"d.a.m.ned hard! sir--hard! Egad! I'd burn the last ham in the locker to overtake her!"--and he hurls the glowing stump after the "Senator," as the Spartan youth hurled their shields into the thick of the battle ere rushing to reclaim them.

On we speed, till the trees on the bank seem to fly back past us; and round the point to see the "Senator," just turning another curve!

On still, faster than ever, with every gla.s.s on board jingling in its frame; every joint and timber trembling, as though with a congestive chill!

Still the black demons below ply their fires with the fattest logs, and even a few barrels of rosin are slyly slipped in; the smoke behind us stretched straight and flat from the smoke-stack.

Now we enter a straight, narrow reach with the chase just before us.

Faster--faster we go till the boat fairly rocks and swings from side to side, half lifted with every throb of the engine. Closer and closer we creep--harder and harder thump the cylinders--until at last we close; our bow just lapping her stern! So we run a few yards.

Little by little--so little that we test it by counting her windows--we reach her wheel--pa.s.s it--lock her bow, and run nose and nose for a hundred feet!

The stillness of death is upon both boats; not a sound but the creak and shudder as they struggle on. Suddenly the hard voice of our old pilot crashes through it like a broadaxe:

"Good-bye, Sen'tor! I'll send yer a tug!"--and he gives his bell a merry click.

Our huge boat gives one shuddering throb that racks her from end to end--one plunge--and then she settles into a steady rush and forges rapidly and evenly ahead. Wider and wider grows the gap; and we wind out of sight with the beaten boat five hundred yards behind us.

The cigar I take from my mouth, to make way for the deep, long sigh, is chewed to perfect pulp. A wild, pent-up yell of half-savage triumph goes up from the crowded deck; such as is heard nowhere besides, save where the captured work rewards the b.l.o.o.d.y and oft-repeated charge.

Cheer after cheer follows; and, as we approach the thin column of smoke curling over the trees between us, Styles bestrides the prostrate form of the still sleeping professor and makes the calliope yell and shriek that cla.s.sic ditty, "Old Gray Horse, come out of the Wilderness!" at the invisible rival.

I doubt if heartier toast was ever drunk than that the colonel gave the group around the wheel-house, when Styles "stood" the wine plighted the pilot. The veteran was beaming, the glengary sat jauntily on one side; and his voice actually gurgled as he said:

"Egad! I'd miss my dinner for a week for this! Gentlemen, a toast!

Here's to the old boat! G.o.d bless her ---- _soul!_"

CHAPTER VI.

BOAT LIFE AFLOAT AND AGROUND.

The day after the race our trio exhausted all usual resources of boat life. We lounged in the saloon and saw the young ladies manage their beaux and the old ones their children; dropped into the card-rooms and watched the innocent games--some heavy ones of "draw poker" with a "bale better;" some light ones of "all fours," with only an occasional old sinner deep in chess, or solitaire. For cards, conversation, tobacco, yarns and the bar make up boat life; it being rare, indeed, that the _ennui_ is attacked from the barricade of a book. Then we roamed below and saw the negroes--our demons of the night before, much modified by sunlight--tend the fires and load cotton. A splendidly developed race are those Africans of the river boats, with shiny, black skins, through which the corded and tense muscles seem to be bursting, even in repose. Their only dress, as a general thing, is a pair of loose pantaloons, to which the more elegant add a fancy colored bandanna knotted about the head, with its wing-like ends flying in the wind; but shirts are a rarity in working hours and their absence shows a breadth of shoulder and depth of chest remarkable, when contrasted with the length and lank power in the nether limbs. They are a perfectly careless and jovial race, with wants confined to the only luxuries they know--plenty to eat, a short pipe and a plug of "n.i.g.g.e.r-head," with occasional drinks, of any kind and quant.i.ty that fall to their lot. Given these, they are as contented as princes; and their great eyes roll like white saucers and their splendid teeth flash in constant merriment.

As we got further down the river, the flats became less frequent and high, steep bluffs took their place; and at every landing along these we laid-by for cotton and took in considerable quant.i.ties of "the king."